Historian of Visual and Material Culture

Rethinking the Confederate Flag

Recently, the flying and display of the Confederate Flag has come into question following the murder of unarmed individuals praying in a Charleston church in June 2015. Many historians expressed their frustration and outrage at the event, and linked important discussions on Twitter and in other forums that could serve as teaching resources to supplement discussions of the history of the Confederate Flag. A large cache appeared with the hashtag #CharlestonSyllabus, which have been compiled by the African American Intellectual History Society here, while others circulated petitions such as this one, from the American Humanist Association. Professional organizations, such as the American Historical Association, also spoke out to clarify the history of this powerful symbol and compiled sources here. Still others took to the web, chronicling the events with editorials that linked past and present, as in Kevin Levin’s blog about the memory of the Civil War.

For historians and teachers looking to examine the controversy as it unfolded in the summer of 2015, I have compiled a rough list of primary sources below. The newspaper articles and online editorials attempt to reconstruct, in chronological order, the events and opinions that point to our troubled understanding of the history of the Confederate Flag and its meanings today. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but instead evocative of the myriad ways to bring this controversy into a discussion of the need to reinterpret historical sites, of the controversy’s relation to issues of public history, and of the need for historians to take a strong voice in shaping public memory of such events.